The Emily Testament

On Thursday around 9pm it sunk in…the upcoming weekend would be my last in France nooo! The knowledge rapidly transitioned into that frantic oh-my-gosh-I-haven’t-done-anything mode that we all know and love. I wrote out a long list of everything I wanted and needed to get done before Saturday the 26th, then narrowed it until there were two things on the schedule for the weekend: to go to Arles and to go to church.

The first one makes sense, right? A French town, not too far away, full of museums and Roman ruins and Romanesque buildings and food and art and shopping and so on. The second might be a little further afield for all you (atheists!) out there…but hear me out. And I’ll cut you off right there and say that no, I don’t feel the urgent need to go to confession because of all the sinning I’ve been doing in France. I’m not Catholic.

What? Oh, yes. All my life, my parents have dragged my sister and me across Europe from cathedral to cloister, but I don’t actually remember a service not in English. I’ve gotten a glimpse of non-American Christianity as a child in East Anglia and during Christmases in at Westminster London, but I’ve never been to any kind of religious ceremony that’s truly foreign. Unless you count that time we accidentally landed in the middle of a Patron Saint Day parade in Positano and I got checked out by a nun.

Unfortunately, I missed the Saturday bus to Arles, and so had to give up on the witnessing of all that somber French and Latin and echoing ancient ritual. Early Sunday morning, I woke up, got dressed, and headed to the bus station while the heavens grumbled above.

I had been told on Saturday that I could buy my bus pass directly on the bus, so I didn’t bother to stop at the darkened ticket counter, instead squeezing my way under the small shelter to get out of the rain. I hate waiting. After about five minutes of wondering whether those Saturday instructions had been correct, I summoned up the courage to ask an elderly British couple if they had ever ridden the bus before. They were friendly but clueless, so I girded my loins and knocked on a nearby bus door. The driver looked at me suspiciously, but let me in, and I mumbled out something about buses and students and tickets and discounts, at which point he pointed me back up the hill to the ticket counter. Merci, I said. Merde! I thought. That’s one thing that I’ve gotten down in the six weeks I’ve had in France.

Jogging back up the hill, I discovered that, in fact, I can’t get a student pass on the bus. I also can’t get one at the ticket counter…it’s Sunday. Merde! I sprint back down the hill and dish out ten Euros for a one-way ticket to Arles. Time for a rant.

I understand the purpose of given students a discount, and I understand the logic behind cutting the price for tickets in bulk. But why, oh France, does it cost just five Euros to buy a student pass card (and just one euro for each ensuing bus ride for the possessor of said card) when it costs ten Euros forty for a one-way trip to Arles? Could you try to reconcile these prices by bringing down the “normal” tickets? Don’t you want thoughtless tourists to hesitate before buying the bargain basement deal? Can we allow a student to present identification and purchase a single, student-priced ticket? Or, can we open the flipping ticket counter on Sundays?

I was hot and sticky and in a bad mood when I got on the bus, and I had the lurking feeling that I should have just found an Aixoise cathedral instead. However, the rain started to clear and I was hoping for sunnier skies. First though, to complete this travel experience, is an evil bus from hell, filled with children who kick the backs of seats and scream, body odor and mysterious stains on toxicolored seats, greasy streaked windows, and a woman who looked and acted like a bad female Ricky Gervais who coughed frequently and wetly onto the back of my head.

In Arles, I leapt off the bus and headed straight for the tourist office to continue on my general mission to confuse tourist office employees as possible. I managed to find out that there was some sort of big event occurring at all the museums, and also that there were no free museums on Sunday. I don’t really understand this – is it because the free ones close on Sunday, or do they just increase their prices? – because I was thoroughly distracted from what the woman behind the counter was saying by a bespectacled boy playing ferociously with a Dragon Ball Z action figure. Some things are universal, namely the explosion noises boys aged 6-12 make.

I wasn’t so very upset about the museums, because I secretly don’t like Van Gogh very much. Although, good work with the whole ear thing. Present me with an ear in a box (you’ll have to get in line, JT) and just see what happens. Anyways, I was hungry; I searched the Sunday streets for an open restaurant, ditching one precipitously as the water was brought because they didn’t accept credit cards, and ending up at another under the shadow of a large Roman ruin.

After a salad, some bread, an entire carafe of water, and a bottle of Breton cider (slogan: strength and character), I was feeling infinitely better. The ruin I’d been sitting under turned out to be an arena of not-quite Colosseum proportions, but not half bad, considering how far we are from Rome. This arena appeared to still be in use: there were bullfighting posters ringing the walls. I looked for some posters advertizing taureau piscine, but didn’t see any. Taureau piscine, for those who don’t know, is the hilarious variant of bullfighting where random children attempt to force a bull into a swimming pool. Or so I’ve heard.

After the ruins, I realized I…really…had to find a toilette. I am a small person who had just imbibed the contents of a large carafe. Fortunately (I guess), I found the most hideous bathroom this side of Italy. After miraculously managing to perform all operations successfully while not touching any surfaces, I got stuck inside. Okay, the lock wouldn’t turn for maybe half a minute, but it seemed like several hours that I was trapped behind the large, thick, slimy steel door. After the trauma, I made my way across the square and into Church of St. Trophime. God had been calling long enough. I walked through a christening party and into a Romanesque forest of columns ringed with white flowers. It was nearing the heat of the day, so after I strolled around the perimeter of the nave, I sat for a while in a cool alcove and read some trivial fiction. And was finally at peace.

The rest of the afternoon I spent walking around the city, looking at architecture and searching for a bank machine so I could get another ten Euros for the trip back to Aix. (I was welcomed by the happy dancing ATM machine graphic and pocketed (okay, walleted) two crisp…for the sake of the story…ten euro notes.) I made my way to a park that looked eerily familiar; I think I must have run amok there as a kid. I sat by a pool of still water in which was immersed what appeared to be a horrible statue of a dying woman and dead kids, and finished my book, just in time for a bird to poo on it. Gross. And yet, fortunate, as the book was shielding my lap.

Parting with the second ten Euros for the return to Aix was slightly easier than the first ten, perhaps because I had been steeling myself for it, and perhaps because I was pretty well ready to get back to the flat and take a shower. Although, the first thing I did upon re-entry was to compose a quick note to the Man Upstairs.